1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods for inspecting liquid ejection, apparatuses for inspecting liquid ejection, liquid ejecting apparatuses, inkjet printers, and computer-readable media that execute ejection inspection of a liquid from a nozzle.
2. Description of the Related Art
Inkjet printers that carry out printing by ejecting ink onto various media such as paper, cloth, and film, are known as an example of liquid ejecting apparatuses. These inkjet printers perform color printing by ejecting color inks such as cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), and black (K) to form dots on the medium. Ink ejection is carried out using nozzles.
However, with such inkjet printers, clogging can occur in the nozzles due to adherence of the ink for example, and the ink may not be ejected properly. When ink cannot be ejected properly from the nozzles, dots cannot be formed appropriately on the medium, and this results in the problem that an image will not be printed clearly. For this reason, it is necessary to inspect whether or not ink is being ejected properly by periodically inspecting nozzle ejection.
Accordingly, various methods for inspecting whether or not ink is being ejected properly from a nozzle have been proposed conventionally. Specifically, methods have been proposed such as inspection for ejection failure of an ink by detecting whether or not a laser beam is blocked by the ink ejected from the nozzle.
However, a large-scale laser irradiation device is necessary to irradiate the laser beam in such an inspecting method, and in addition to it being exceedingly difficult to secure space inside the printer for installing such a laser irradiation device, there is also the problem that this incurs greatly increased costs. For these reasons, there is an earnest desire for an ejection inspection apparatus that does not require much installation space, does not incur greatly increased costs, and is compact with a simpler structure.